The Little World

Well, you could be fooled into thinking that if you just saw the fueslage and wings, couldn’t you. Angular, but sleek.

No-one in the SCNAC stayed sleek for long – eventually their Gallic desire to attach a strut, a window, or a café awning and chairs asserted itself and before you knew it you had a French bomber. This one was no exception.

I think they probably designed them in a building that had small, separate rooms. And the wing crew barely spoke to the fuselagistes. Neither of them could stand the tailplane chaps and there was dead silence in the factory restaurant whenever they encountered each other. Bad blood with fabric and duraluminium struts…

I was congratulating myself with the job done on the rudders and their top struts – on straight with struts faired on with Sprue Goo. Then I looked at the bottom parts that the kit provided and realised that not only were they too short by a good deal, there were additional struts the Czechs just blithely dismissed as faire soi-même again.

I am nothing if not cheap and resourceful The lenticular cross-section of an aircraft strut was produced with small slices from an Evergreen material that must have been rolladoor stock for model railways. Each strut is two lengths cemented together and custom-fitted. You can see how deficient the kit parts really were.